In that Petty Patent, there was described and illustrated an animal feeder which comprised a food holder having a plurality of depressions located in spaced apart arrangement around a periphery of the holder providing thereby a plurality of compartments for holding of food, cover means to restrict access to all but one of the compartments by the animal at any one time and trigger means including a trigger plate extending outwardly of the cover means and the holder accessible by an animal whereby depression of the trigger plate effected a change of access for the animal from the first of the compartments to the further of the compartments, by movement of the food holder relative to the cover. The energy required to effect movement of the food holder was supplied by a flat helical spring ("clock spring") which was wound up every time the food holder was replenished. The trigger means included an escapement mechanism comprising a trigger plate extending radially from a body supporting the food holder and located adjacent the accessible location through the cover, so that when an animal such as a cat approached the food holder, by stepping on the trigger plate, the food holder was caused to rotate through one of a plurality of indexed movements. The trigger plate had an inwardly directed finger thereon which was releasably engaged by each of a plurality of circumferentially spaced radially projecting lugs, but upon depression for example by a oat, the finger was drawn outwardly to a position clear of the edge of a lug to allow that lug to move forwardly for an index movement.
The arrangement described above functioned satisfactorily in many respects, but had some inherent problems which it is the object of this invention to overcome.
Firstly, with the arrangement the subject of the Petty Patent, it was necessary to remove the actuating spring along with the food bowl if the food bowl was required to be cleaned by immersion in sudsy water, which would otherwise cause the spring to rust and possibly malfunction. It is not always convenient to so remove the spring actuating mechanism, since the ends of the spring need to be reinserted in the respective receptacles. The main object of this invention therefore is to provide an improvement whereby the spring actuating mechanism is retained to the base of a feeder when the food bowl is removed.